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Big Black Delta Mystery Solved?
jonerik writes "According to this article from Space.com, hundreds of sightings of enormous arrowhead-shaped aircraft that have been logged since the 1980s just might have been solved. According to a new report by the National Institute for Discovery Science, the craft (referred to as Big Black Deltas, or BBDs) are massive black airships on the order of 600 feet long, 300 feet wide, and 40 feet tall, weighing on the order of 100 tons and capable of carrying huge loads over long distances. Since a 2001 NIDS study correlated sightings of large triangular or delta-shaped objects with Air Force Materiel Command and Air Mobility Command bases throughout the United States, it's assumed that the BBDs are DoD transport airships. Dr. L. Scott Miller, professor of Aerospace Engineering at Wichita State University, agrees with much of the NIDS report. 'I do think that a large airship, with a heavy lift and other mission objectives, has been built,' says Dr. Miller. 'Lockheed has shown a great deal of interest in airships for many years. The real question is whether the Department of Defense has committed to buy and use such machines.'"
No one will ever know. (Nelson from the Simpsons)
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Besides, then you can get said enemy all scared about aliens and stuff. That's always good.
Simple.
All of the "wars" that America has handled for the past little bit has been through a build-up phase on orders of months or so. If there is a super-quick way to move men/materials/totally cool *hit in then the enemy will be in a relaxed posture.
You can't plan for what you don't know.
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
All of the "wars" america has handled in the last little bit were total one sided slaughters. It's not like if Iraq of Afganistan had an extra 2 weeks to prepare they would have "won"...
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security
"Elecrokinetic propulsion means that no propellers or jets are used."
Someone want to explain that one?
I was going to post this anonymously, but then decided it would just lessen my credibility.
I saw one of these in (of all places) Denton, Texas in 1992. I was going to the University of North Texas, and was hanging out at this friend of mine's house. We had stayed up all night talking politics and philosophy, and had gone out onto the balcony so I could smoke.
Her apartment was on the second floor, facing the pool, behind which was another two-storey apartment building. We hadn't been out there long when I noticed something moving just above the building opposite us. It was triangular in shape, with lights at each of the points. In appearance it was dark grey, and the lights at the points were just a tad brighter than the stars around the thing. It's orientation was almost completely vertical: imagine holding up a mostly-equilateral triangle in front of you and moving it from left to right, with the point facing right. It was moving very slowly, I would estimate at around 20 or 30 MPH.
I shouted out "Hey, what's that?" It took a short while for her to see it, but eventually she did. We watched it for a minute, chattering excitedly, before it slowly turned away from us and disappeared off to the west.
It didn't make a sound, and it was very big. It was unidentified, it was flying, and it was an object. Beyond that I make no claims. But if the DoD can build something like that, then I'm damned impressed.
No, I'm not bullshitting in some weak attempt to get karma. This really did happen to me.
Great you got an airship now all you need is a guy named Cid to fly it and some dudes with swords.
Then I went to the website that this came from. Let me give those of you who bought this a clue: Any website which has "Consciousness Studies" on the front page is not anything close to reputable when it comes to speculating about objects flying in the air.
Perhaps I'm being a bit thick-headed and missed the sarcasm, but it sure seemed like this was honestly submitted, and this is nothing but a load of crap.
Come on, give it up, that's
I don't think these modern wars can get much shorter. The Gulf War was over before my popcorn got cold.
Consciousness studies are usually conducted with what I would term "consciouness aids". In the Timothy Leary sense. This could explain almost everything else this website reports on.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Okay, some quick calculations, based on the estimated volume and mass, gives me a net payload of way less than 100 tons. (More like about 40 tons unless I messed up the math. - Figure a volume of about 36 million cu ft, the density is about 25 grams/cu ft, for a net lift of 10 gms/cu ft (air weighing about 35 gm/cu ft), or 36 metric tons.
A 747-400 has a payload of over 120 tons with a range of over 4400 nautical miles. Why not just use 747s? (Although, if this airship has the advantages of stealth and being able to "land" just about anywhere, there might be some point.)
Somehow I don't buy it.
-- Alastair
Reading this article in light of the book review at Salon.com today, about supposedly hidden anti-gravity technology the US took from the Nazis after WWII. http://www.salon.com/books/review/2002/08/05/zero_ gravity/index.html
They don't give the book a lot of credence, but the fact that it was written by an editor at Jane's Defense makes it a little more plausible. The author says that some of that technology, if it exists, is actually being used in the B-2 bombers. It would, don't chya think, make sense to put two and two together and come up with a big-ass blimp that is powered by some obscure technology to keep it afloat.
Makes sense to me.
The airships don't come and go - they're out there constantly. They're just invisible, both to optical and radar wavelengths. The ships are actually filled with tall, thin, vicious aliens who want to exploit earth's natural resources and kidnap earth's children.
The reason they haven't landed yet is because they find earth's atmosphere poisinous. The high humidity burns their skin the way hydrochloric acid burns human skin. They haven't developed the appropriate environmental suits yet because (despite being able to traval intersteller distances) they're not that smart, and don't know, for instance, how to turn door knobs. They're also confused about where to land, since all of their original crop sign navigation markers were soon replaced by the work of Disney executives and 30 year-old nerds who don't have girlfriends.
Patiwat Panurach
patiwat@sloan.mit.edu
"Big Black Delta Mystery Solved?"
One really shouldn't use the words 'Big' and 'Delta' in the same headline unless it is about Delta Burke. I had to read a little ways in before I realized I had the wrong image in my mind.
They are government crafts. Just because they dont make a sound and can move fast doesnt change the fact that its just an spycraft.
Ive seen the flying black triangles before too, I havent seen a flying saucer, that would be diffrent. But a flying triangle? Thats likely one of our crafts. How does it work or fly? I dont know, but we have the technology.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Big Black Ships? mysterious humming drive systems?
/. editors.
n ge.net
www.ufodisclosure.comg onuforeview.comd og.comv e.orgo m
How did this get by the
I know it is an "argumentum ad hominem" but just do an AltaVista search and see all the people who link to the "National Institute of Discovery Science" and you will not find a bunch of references in serious scientific journals.
You will, however, get a reasonably comprehensive list of UFO whako sites. A small sample:
www.area51researchcenter.com
www.virtuallystra
www.ufofinland.net
www.ufowisconsin.com
www.aliendave.com
www.ore
ufounderground.net
www.ufowatch
www.truthseekeratroswell.com
www.stardri
www.intrudersfoundation.org
www.ufoinfo.c
www.ufoconspiracy.com
www.artbell.com
You be the judge
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
In Somalia no one "won".
The United States did pull out it's forces, but the United Nations Mission (Pakistan, Qatar, Italy) remained.
The United States Embassy remained.
By the Day of the Rangers, the United States was already starting a draw-down in the region.
The Somalia people lost, the Clans lost, the United Nations lost, the United States lost soldiers, the Canadians broke up it's Para Regiment.
There were no winners in that conflict.
"Hey guys, you'll never guess what they think we're building this time!"
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
This kind of cargo airship would be very large, take a long time to get anywhere, and would probably fly much, much lower than a plane. Trying to keep its existence secret would be a substantial challenge to say the least.
So, given the non-secretness of the whole idea of a big cargo airship, the difficulty of keeping one secret if it existed, and the fact that the exact capabilities of a transport aircraft aren't generally the most important things to keep secret anyway, why bother?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Perfect ingredients for a misidentification. You say it was grey, on its side. I doubt very much you could see enough detail to tell it was on its side. An airliner banking would present a nice planform.
Grey? At night? Colors are notoriously hard to see at night.
200 feet? Depth perception at night is hard, and 200 feet is getting near the limit in daylight for binocular stereo depth perception. Most depth perception is based on the perceived size of a known object; for instance, cars on a highway, or airliners in the sky. It could easily have been thousands of feet away and you wouldn't be able to tell since you didn't know what the object was and thus what it's absolute size was.
Ditto for slow. Anything far away would have a slow angular velocity, and based on your perception of it being only 200 feet away, of course it looked slow. The biggest airliners are twice the size of small ones. Big military cargo planes are many times the size of small fighters, and I have many times marveled at the big cargo planes looking so slow when I drive near the local airbases when it is really just the difference in altitude.
Infuriate left and right
I saw one of these as well.
It was in the late 70s, on Vandenburg AFB in California (the west coast missle base.)
It was going rather fast.
Eventually, when the Stealth Fighter was announced, I concluded that that was what I actually saw.
It was very fast, very quiet, and flying low- quite startling. It didn't get enough of a look to recognize it as an airplane (As the stealth is obviously an airplane when you see one stopped)...
but I didn't decide it was a spacecraft either.
Ahh, the days of getting up at 6 am and watching simultaneous dual-minutman launches.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Big ballon; meaning that if you can get to it, just about all you need if you're the enemy is a sharp stick, and it's fairly slow, so it can't run away or evade very well.
However along with the possiblity that they're already got some kind of stealth technology, the enemy is even more unlikely to be able to spot them if they don't know they're supposed to be looking for a (relatively) slow moving baloon rather than a fast moving airplane.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Theoretical Scientists have discovered that the V-ship is powered by a homeopathic antiradioactive nuclear (HARN) power plant.
This incredible breakthough was paved the way by new age researchers. It's well know that it's possible to treat medical problems by giving someone immensely weak doses of substances that would cause similar symptoms in large does. What most scientists didn't realize was that the same thing could be accomplished with nuclear power.
By having a small dose of nuclear material (in this case the glowing stuff scraped off the watch hands from an old glow-in-the-dark watch) blocked by an extremely watered down substance (the remaining amount of lead in a lead pencil), massive amounts of nuclear power can be harnessed. Also, since the objects naturally cause a minute amount of gravity to affect the ship, the ship responds with an incredible amount of anti-gravity, allowing it to fly.
No Zen is good zen
It could be because they claim that they great flying airships are nuclear powered. How comfortable would you be with an active nuclear reactor flying over your head just waiting to be shot down or have a mechanical failure? Letting the public know we had something like that in our arsenal would cause all sorts of scare-mongering. Hell, I'm not fully comfortable with the idea. At least nuclear subs are likely to be in deep waters if they get sunk.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
From the articls: "There appears to be an increase in deployment of these vehicles," Kelleher said. "The only time you see these things are when they are leaving or coming in. A lot of these sightings are at night. Our information is that they spend a long time aloft, weeks at a time. They can be thought of as ocean-going ships, rather than aircraft," he said.
This reminds me so much of Final Fantasy! How cool. I wonder when they'll make a luxury air liner; it could reach a lot more sights than an ocean liner. I wonder if they have one called The Big Whale, or if they have a captain named Setzer. They have to have a mechanic named Cid!
BlackGriffen
If true, there should be some very large custom-built hangers for these things that would show up in commercially available satellite photos. Do these exist? (For that matter, the craft themselves should have been imaged multiple times, but in the flood of data, it could be hard to find them.)
On a side line - how are the 'Aurora' rumours coming along? ('Aurora' is supposedly a deep black hypersonic reconnosance airplane, replacing the SR-71.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
I think surprise could be very important to the outcome in the (probably) upcoming war against Iraq.
Think about what you just said. If it occurs to you that a war against Iraq is probable, maybe the same thought occurs to the Iraqis? Kinda ruins the whole surprise aspect when the Washington Post publishes your battle plans. Congress is already holding hearings about how to set up our puppet government in Baghdad once we've done away with Saddam.
They know we're coming. We just don't know it yet.
Incidentally, it was the government's stated goal during the Gulf War to eliminate Iraq as a threat in the Middle East for at least 10 years. The Gulf War was in 1991. Iraq's a little overdue for an ass-whooping.
Back in the 1970's, author John McPhee wrote a great book called "The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed," detailing the efforts of the Aereon company to create a lighter-than-air transport vessel.
e re on.jpg (the original design for the Aereon)
9 /a ereon.html (article from 1999 about the possible return of the Aereon corp, including the following quote:
The company has, over the years, been issued five US patents for their work, numbers (feel free to look them up) 4149688, 4896160, 5034751, 5931411, and 6179248.
McPhee is by no means a crackpot or a ufo "journalist", but rather a widely respected non-fiction author who has covered subjects from nuclear energy ("The Curve of Binding Energy") to oranges ("Oranges") and underground russian art ("The Ransom of Russian Art"). Although he is certainly not an expert in aerodynamics, he is not a biased party.
The Aereon ships, shaped something like a bright orange pumpkin seed (hence the title), were never any longer than 26 feet, and the 26-footer (a test, basically) required no helium to take off--but the notion was always that the larger, transport versions, would need some assistance from helium to lift off and travel. The goal of the shape is to combine the lift capabilities of a normal plane with the features of a blimp. It was always meant for transport.
A few urls:
http://www.johnmcphee.com/deltoid.htm
http://www.nidsci.org/news/illinois/aereon.html (from NIDS itself, commenting on the possibility of the vessel being an Aereon or an Aereon knockoff)
http://www.users.on.net/justin/docs/transport/a
http://www.aereoncorp.com/ Official Website of the Aereon corp, including a picture of the Aereon 26 in flight
http://www.pacpubserver.com/new/business/6-22-9
Mr. Smith [an Aereon employee] described Aereon's two most promising current projects. One is a rotor vector -- part helicopter, part helium balloon -- that is being designed to replace helicopters in aerial logging operations. The second is a version of Aereon 26 that the company is designing to carry radar. Called WASP -- wide aperture surveillance plane -- and capable of a making continuous 360 degrees sweeps of the sky, the deltoid-shaped craft would far exceed the effectiveness of current anti-missile detection aircraft, Mr. Smith said.
end quote. You'll note that the only current patent Aereon corp holds is for the WASP-style system)
I'm not saying I have any idea what these things people are seeing are, I'm just mentioning a possibility. Anyone still interested in this *kind* of vessel should definitely go read "The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed" by McPhee.
-gleam
this
Maybe it was real. Maybe it was swamp-gas. Both are entirely possible in my estimation.
In what manner did it dissapear? Did it fly off over the horizon, getting smaller & smaller until it was gone? Did it simply fade from view? Typically, when genuine, these things fly off at 'incredible speeds'.
Just curious.
-Fantastic Lad --Art Bell: disinfo genius?
Do the sitings also correlate to conferencers CowboyNeal has been attending? If so, how was Slashdot able to contract service from the DoD?
Many apologies to CowboyNeal for the joke made at his expense...
In what manner did it dissapear?
Well, "disappear" may be overly dramatic. "Became too damn hard to see anymore" is more like it. It was difficult to see in the first place, and just became impossible to see after it turned and moved away from us.
1. The existence of "big airships" would be classified if knowledge of them exposed classified technologies and/or methodologies used to build, fly and maintain them.
2. "Keeping stuff" classified is not that difficult. No one is going to avoid any promising new technology simply because it will be classified. Clearances do take a long time, but plenty of cleared personnel are already available.
3. The U-2, the stealth prototypes, and the SR-71 all flew for years before being publicly acknowledged by confining flight operations and support to a small number of secure facilties.
4. Lack of a clearance does not absolve you of responsibility for exposing classified information. If someone decides to land a secret aircraft within view of your office window, one of two things is likely to happen: (1) You won't be allowed to be there when it lands; (2) you get a security briefing, you sign some papers, and you get a new clearance.
5. A large, stealthy transport that can hover or make use of a very short runway and fly missions of global dimensions would be a tremendous boon to any country's military. Such an aircraft would greatly reduce dependence on prepositioning troops and materials and on the willingess of other nations to allow use of their facilities and airspace.
6. If such an aircraft exists, why assume it is a cargo or troop transport? Why not a weapons platform? The U.S. uses the B-2 as a weapons platform on flights originating within the U.S. Think what weaponry a stealth aircraft the size of a football field could carry.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
As I recall, a B-29 is perfectly capable of leveling a city... and with today's technology, much larger cities can be leveled with much smaller bombs. Isn't technology great?
Just for clarification, the company you refer to is different. You're right though, it's iffy, but for military logistics the arguments seem pretty compelling to me if the costs hold up.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
gleam,
Why do I have this feeling that Aereon is actually a front company for a Lockheed Skunk Works project?
If you remember from the late Ben Rich's book Skunk Works, the way Clarence Kelly Johnson got the parts to build the U-2 was to order the parts through a front company named C & J Engineering, complete with a postal box out in Sunland, CA, which was well-away from the Lockhead plant at Burbank, CA. It's possible that the Aereon company was a ruse to cover up Lockheed's ressearch into stealth lighter-than-air vehicles used for reconnaissance and special ops transport.
Besides, then you can get said enemy all scared about aliens and stuff. That's always good.
Yeah, 'cause it worked in Spies Like Us, right?
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
If this kind of stuff gets posted to /. then I'm wondering why we didn't hear about any of their animal mutilation reports or the paper that says that time reversals are responsible for deja vu.
Ad hominem is a reasonable argument once in a while. Say crazy things enough times, and your credibility is burned.
Wow, my University just got linked. Now the suckness that is our webpage will be reveiled to the world. Damn damn.
I would not trust anything that comes from a profesor at WSU. Think of David D's character in Evolution...
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
If it doesn't need pressure to hold its shape, the helium/hydrogen can be at 1 atmosphere, and will only leak slowly if punctured. It would probably have multiple cells, many of which would have to be deflated to crash the ship.
All together, it could be less fragile than a plane relying on thrust and airfoils for lift.
--
Benjamin Coates
They all say "Goodyear" on the side of them, right?
The "landing just about anywhere" thing is all of the point. Being able to drop an armored vehicle and a handful of troops anywhere, any time, with no warning and little prep is a Very Big Thing. Alternately, you could take that same troop/armor load and sit twenty miles off someone's coast for a couple of days and wait for something to happen, with a reaction time of minutes instead of hours (or days). Or, if it has good high-altitude capability, you could fly a partly-loaded one up to 100,000 feet or so and use it as a manned sensor/weapons platform that nobody could touch.
Okay, I've checked about a dozen calendars now. Since this is NOT April 1, I don't get it...what's the punchline?
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
How could anyone keep a blimp a secret? Skunkworks? Come on! I really doubt the premise that the DoD or a contrator has built a big, secret, triangular, black blimp and has been flying them around. Near populated areas? With running lights? This doesn't add up. I'm feeling a lot of stubble burn when I apply Occam's Razor.
I think the congressional hearings are great. Support for overthrowing Saddam is already shaky. We either need to not do it, or to do it with the moral backing of the democratic process.
Attacking with surprise can save lives. On the other hand, staying out of Vietnam would have saved a whole lot of lives, too.
One puzzling thing about the secret military craft theory is why the hell they would fly them over *populated* areas, such as Pheonix, etc?
If you have a secret craft, generally you find places with the *least* amount of eyeballs. Pheonix and Texas cities do not qualify. (Plus, the chance it may crash if it is a test vehicle.)
Table-ized A.I.
I don't know if you can see the same ad on that webpage as I, but it has an ad for free-fall (weightless) flights where it looks like about half the passengers are going to lose their meal. Especially Mr. Heaverthot near the bottom there.
The guy against the wall looks like he just finished and is happy just to wait it out at the hand railing.
I think I would find a better ad image if I was the flight company there.
Table-ized A.I.
An appointment has been made for a visit by many men in dark suits and black sunglasses to visit you and 'explain' to you what you 'really saw'. Please contact truth@mib.gov ...
Two Mormons, one Johava Witness, and 3 Scientologists already did this for us.
It is the "new Ark". It must be true because that is the only thing those oddballs all agreed on.
I purchased 3 tickets just in case they are right. If they are wrong, there is always ebay, no?
Table-ized A.I.
Consider -- you park your giant airship built of low-observability materials on the edge of space above Baghdad. You have a crew watching certain areas through spy-plane style cameras. When and if they see the target, they shine a laser on the target and drop a smart bomb.
Then you linger some more. You're way the hell above the reach of any sort of air defense. You wait for the smoke to clear and do a solid damage assessment. If you see a convoy of cars fleeing at high speed, you target them and drop a couple of cluster bombs.
Then you linger some more. Panic AA fire starts up, by it's way, *way* to low. You have a good laugh and hit the john. As an added feature, when you flush it just dumps out the bottom. You wait for the smoke to clear, and you see a guy in a beret with a mustache legging it the hell out of there. You power up Cowboy Neal's big honkin' CO2 laser and turn him into a pile of organic dust.
It's like having some really impressive space-based weapons, except that they have unlimited linger time, are very easy to retask, you don't have to mess with reentry heat, you have a crew sitting up there to handle things real time and you can just scoot back for refueling, remanning and rearming when you're all done. Plus, while you're waiting, you could have played AWAC to support your buddies in the fixed-wings.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I'd rather have a reactor go down than a flying oil tanker. At least the reactor won't spray napalm over my neighborhood when it hits -- there will be instead be a slightly "hot" crater. The nuclear fuel will hit the ground like armored lead, and stay where it lands. No impressive and deadly fire/explosion to kill dozens or hundreds (even thousands) as it careens at 400+ mph through my residential streets.
Depends on what you consider "winning" to be. Go by pure kill ratio and the US won 100-1.
Airships were used in World War I and to a lesser extent World War II. They proved quite hardy (once they started using helium!!!) - have dozens of separate gas cells. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to make the cells out of Kevlar or that new spider silk stuff.
Low observability is also a possibility. If they're stealth planes, they could be pretty safe. Also, they can fly higher than most airplanes - that's how the SR-71 and U2 avoided interceptor jets and SAM missiles, which couldn't reach up that high.
Also, if they're transport planes, they'd be used to take material into staging areas, not battle zones - for example, Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War. They'd be not much more vulnerable than a large transport aircraft.
I'm not trying to poke fun at you, but the mind can play tricks.
I was driving along a country road at night, many years ago. It was a moonless night, and I was the only car on the road. Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly noticed a light. It really freaked me out. It was a long bright cigar shape, and it was going exactly the same speed as the car. It was on the passenger side, and as it followed me, it was moving slowly up and down.
It took me about a minute to finally figure out what it was. One completely freaked out befuddled minute. And then I realized... My car headlights were reflecting off a power line.
Oh well. Maybe another day...
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
I'm not really swayed one way or the other by technological arguments for or against such propositions. I'm not scientifically illiterate, meaning I'm literate enough to know I'm ignorant of much of science.
What really strikes me is the socialogical aspects of such an undertaking. You don't just team up with your bestest buddy from grade school who would never rat on you and build a 100 giga ton nuclear powered orbital warship. This type of endeavor would require the participation of, I dunno, many thousands of people. At the least.
How the hell do you keep that many people quiet?
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
If the US actually had a big cargo lifter, it would be in use right now moving stuff into Afghanistan. Our units there now are light on artillery and armor because everything has to be flown in. It's a very tough logistics problem.
If this thing is really 300 feet wide, that implies that somewhere there's a pair of aircraft hangar doors more than 300 feet wide.
Surely there's not many hangars capable of hiding this kind of beast (unless it somehow folds up like Optimus Prime)
Until I see pics, Call me a skeptic
Yes, yes, crap. Thanks, let's move on.
Anyhow, when the next secret aircraft is uncovered, and tied to a number of unsolved sightings, it would be nearly as significant as proof that it was aliens.
How secure would you feel knowing that there were military aircraft overhead, that no radar station was able to confirm? How would you feel knowing that the paranoid kook that you discounted was actually right? All the reports that have been discounted will no doubt give great insight, and reveal tell-tale signs of what the government does when attempting to cover-up a legit sighting.
And I'd like to end with some advice for you kooks that often photograph blury black blotches flying in the sky. Get the following:
1. An industrial stregenth spot-light.
2. A very hi-definition video camera, with good optical zoom
3. A laser range-finder
With that, you should be able to:
1. Light-up the craft.
OR
2. Instantly determine what is causing the optical illusion.
3. Get very detailed moving photos of the craft.
4. Get a definitive distance measurement, that will help when reviewing the tape(s).
5. Get credibility
You might discover classified military craft-in which case you can rub the video in the face of all the radar operators.
Hell, even if you discover that you aren't seeing craft, you just might end up with the most detailed film of some particular natural phenomenon. That's not such a bad runner-up prize.
#5 is most important. It was crappy photos that convinced the public of the lock-ness monster. The same such photos aren't going to convince anyone with half a brain.
In the worst case, with that setup, you WILL difinitively discover the real source of those sightings, and put your own mind at ease.
Heh, Aliens that can travel much faster than the speed of light, can instantly accelerate, and can stay hidden for a century, but they can't stay 'cloaked' at night, or in areas where there is not adaqute equipment to get a good record of them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
....U2 avoided interceptor jets and SAM missiles, which couldn't reach up that high.
Well, at least one did - I refer you to the story of one Francis Gary Powers, U2 pilot shot down over Russia, at which point all western air forces immediately rethought their strategy of attacks at high flight levels...
"Information wants to be paid"
I can explain everything easily, but first you must look at the little light at the top of this metal tube thing.
Thank you, what you saw was not a delta flyer, or an alien space craft, it was... umm... the light defracting off of venus through some swamp gas released by a weather balloon... yeah, that's it... So, don't worry about it and go on your way. nothing to see here. And you... find someone you like and get some new clothes...
~ kjrose
It's the floating S.H.I.E.L.D. base!
Someone needs to see if there was a sighting of a hairy dude with an eyepatch and a cigar in the area.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Generators don't create charge. They seperate them.
You can run a generator all you like but you won't change the overall charge of an airship. You could do something like make the skin have a different charge than the interior, if that's what you mean. That could have some effect in the clouds, but it sounds like it would be unpredicatable and dangerous.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Probably a fancy name for a MHD turbine.
What it the buoyancy effect is just used as a freebie, and the large wing area also contributes to the lift significanty
Ah, you're talking about something like the deltoid pumpkin seed. Yeah, that's a valid possibility that I overlooked. (Posting in the middle of the night, what can I say.) Modern materials technology might make that design more feasible (although they did eventually get the prototype working).
-- Alastair
The estimates can't be anywhere near reality. I mean "weighing on the order of 100 tons". Yeah, right.
Go look at http://www.cargolifter.com/ for some info on people are actually planning to build a heavy lift airship if they cane solve their insolvency problems. That baby'll weigh around 400 tons dry.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Try this.
**>>BELCH
One out of hundreds/thousands of flights... not an awful record.
Of course, SAMs and interceptor aircraft are better now, but stealth likely offsets that.
Actually, the people we went after in that raid were captured. We weren't going after the head (Wahid, was it?), we were going after his lieutenants (and got a lot of them). A number died during the extraction, but we still got 'em.
Jet technology is not our cutting edge technology. Our cutting edge technology is too expensive to make in mass quantities, This is why we still use jets.
While we can create unmannned flying triangle shaped blimps for spy missions, we cannot make enough of them due to their price to use them in great numbers.
While we do have aircrafts which are saucershaped and not jets, these aircrafts cost a fortune to make and they arent very stable due to how they fly, they craft alot so they are unmanned, they were used to spy on the russians during the cold war. They fly at high speed, usually high up in the air and take pictures at the land down below.
Theres also a few of these saucer shaped craft that have weapons which are manned currently in development.
This information is of course classified, you will not see pictures of these crafts until we actually need to use them or until they are obsolete.
Jets are obsolete, so its okay to show our enemies our jets, our newest experimental aircrafts, the best you'll find on them is patents, designs, and scientists talking about its development on newsgroups.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
No, if you worked on the flightline, you should know that KC-10s and KC-135s have smaller cargo areas. They only take the smaller 6'x8' pallets also used on flatbed trucks. The larger (not sure of their dimensions) standard pallets slide right into C-5s, C-17s, C-141s, and C-130s on floor-mounted (removable) rollers. Even the C-27 (retired since Howard AB, Panama closed) carried the same type of large pallet, albeit sideways, and only one.
IIRC bin Laden used Clinton's disastrous Somalia adventure as the case study that the supposedly invicible American military could be defeated by political means. It led directly to greater support, more sympathizers, etc.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
SECTION 1. DECLARATION OF WAR.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
So, it's not a UFO. It's just a perfectly ordinary flying object that remains unidentified. This article sure closed the case on this one!
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
Uh, they helped the terrorists maybe? Nah, it was a coincidence that Mohammed Atta met with a senior Iraqi government official. Goodness knows Iraq has no reason to hate the U.S. and even less reason to use a proxy to launch an attack.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
About 14.3, why?
-- Alastair
Notice though that (according to my recolection, varrious news reports, and the reference that you cited) that declaration has not been passed. It was introduced and refered to committee.
A lot of bills get introduced, but they don't count until they are voted on and passed.
-- MarkusQ